Angela Mollard: Tupperware fate is all but sealed but legacy lives on

Brownie Wise was the entrepreneur who turned around a company’s fortunes with the Tupperware party. Now that brilliance appears to have been squandered, writes Angela Mollard.

Have you heard of Brownie Wise? No, me either (until recently) but her legacy lives on in my kitchen 75 years after she came up with the genius idea of getting women to sell plastic containers to other women.

Brownie did not invent Tupperware, with its magic seal and excellent storage capabilities. That was the work of a dude called Earl Tupper. But she was the savvy entrepreneur who “got” the concept and turned around the company’s fortunes when she set up the model for the Tupperware party.

Like Elizabeth Zott, the heroine in the best-selling Lessons in Chemistry, Brownie was a domestic trailblazer. Yet three-quarters of a century after she spearheaded the Tupperware empire, the brilliance of this divorcee-turned-company vice president appears to have been squandered by a chest-beating boss who put shareholder dividends over investment and innovation.

It’s odd to care so much about a company on the brink of collapse. But in an era where brands are as ephemeral as a TikTok video, Tupperware is emblematic of gentler times when products endured, function trumped style, and “tried and tested” rather than “Instagram-spruiked” was the measure of success.

Brownie Wise, founder of the Tupperware Party concept.

Brownie Wise in a Tupperware poster.

Tupperware didn’t just transport our school lunches, it was the reliable, ever-present prop in our childhoods. Friendships were made as we clicked open our multi-compartment “sandwich keepers” and swapped home-baked biscuits for stickers. You weren’t really a kid of the 1970s if your decanted (and warm) apricot yoghurt hadn’t soaked your Devon sandwich. Likewise, it wasn’t a playdate if someone’s mum didn’t throw open the freezer and offer you an ice block made from raspberry cordial frozen solid in a Tupperware popsicle mould.

Memories of birthday parties, summer holidays, picnics, and baking are savoured not in a sepia hue, but in the soft yellow of the “Suzette” divided serving tray or the vintage orange of the biscuit box. Even tinned beetroot had its own purpose-built container with an insert which lifted the slices free of the juice.

Some of Tupperware’s recent products; many consumers still associate the brand with the burnt-orange and mustard-yellow containers in their mothers’ and grandmothers’ kitchens. Picture: John Greim/Lightrocket/Getty Images

I still have Tupperware’s wonder bowl – the company’s first product released back in 1946 – which has been going strong in my kitchen for more than 20 years. I also have the sifter and shelves full of cream-lidded storage containers which I purchased in 2002 from a friend who started selling the brand after she lost her job.

It’s ironic that a company whose fortunes were built on the durability of its product and the loyalty of women has been so grievously failed by a man who put short-term gain over agility and long-term planning.

Rick Goings, who helmed Tupperware for 20 years, once boasted that he knew exactly what women wanted, but as business analysts survey the damaged company, it’s clear this alpha dinosaur was as irksome as a missing plastic lid. While e-commerce challenged the Tupperware party model and re-usable takeaway containers have contributed to the company’s downfall, experts say it was Goings’ failure to invest and modernise which proved its ultimate failure.

Consumer product analyst Linda Bolton Weiser said the former US navy navigator, who led the company from 1998 to 2018, neglected IT, failed to fix the fundamentals of the direct selling business, and chose to funnel cash flow into high dividends for shareholders.

Rick Goings when Tupperware chief executive.

Goings, who once claimed he looked like Pierce Brosnan (he doesn’t), was 64 when he boasted to The Guardian in 2010 that he understood the female psyche. “I identify very much with that Mel Gibson movie, What Women Want,” he said, referring to the movie where a sales executive can read women’s minds. “I haven’t gotten into trying on pantyhose and seeing what it looks like on me,” he creepily added. “But I love women; I love the company of women.”

Not enough, it seems, to uphold Brownie Wise’s extraordinary legacy, and there were later clues that he was all talk and no walk. In 2017, a year before his exit, he was interviewed by a BBC journalist who noted that, upon finishing his lunch, he indicated he wanted to store the leftovers and looked expectantly at a female colleague to provide a container. “What, you think I’ve got some in my handbag,” she reportedly scoffed.

A Tupperware party in 1989. Picture: Craig Golding/Getty Images

By rights, Tupperware should be a booming company. Its iconic post-war products promoted re-use and sustainability before single-use plastics were even devised, and its commitment to replacing any product that broke, however old, was inspired customer service. During Covid, when the young and environmentally-conscious were forced to cook at home, it could’ve used social media to market itself to a generation – including men – who might’ve secured its success for another half century. Witness how Instagram stars, The Inspired Unemployed, have this week harnessed their followers to market Better Beer.

Instead, the complacent Goings has left a global brand fighting for life. What an insult to Wise who incentivised top sellers with gifts, championed positive thinking and devised a party trick of throwing a wonder bowl full of grape juice around a room to demonstrate the strength of the Tupperware seal. Likewise, what an insult to all of us who have been loyal to the end.

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